Review: Confessions of a Reformission Rev

Confessions of a Reformission Rev.: Hard Lessons from an Emerging Missional Church
Mark Driscoll

I read this on the way to and in Japan. Maybe something was lost in translation. At least I'm clearer now on Mark Driscoll and what he is doing. I don't think I could belong to his church.

For, from the book, it sounds very much like his church. Yes, he's aware of the contributions of others, and he wants to give glory to God. But for all the "I don't care about numbers" protestations, there's something there which points to a man driven to create, for a reason not really explored, a really large church of which he is to be senior pastor. Ooops. I mean Senior Pastor.

It's a very honest book, I think. And it has many lessons which would be good for many of us to learn. There is a genuinely novel mission described, among the evidently very needy people of Seattle. Clearly, something remarkable is being achieved. And - as I said in a previous review - Driscoll is at his best when speaking from the heart and telling his own story. There's not much theorizing here, just lots of raw stories of life.

But it's the theorizing that gets me down. His passion is to do things biblically, which is fine. And so he manages, through searching the scriptures, to reject all sorts of unbiblical received patterns for doing stuff in church, and to come up with some which he judges to be biblical. Where then does his insistence on being Senior Pastor of a number of by-now separate congregations fit in? What was that about having "let go" the Worship leader because he couldn't handle co-ordinating bands across several different venues and services? All that reorganizing for growth, over, and over again.

I know we all have blind spots. But if you're going to set yourself up as a highly biblical person (with a very particular view of inspiration, and so on), then it seems most peculiar to me to come out with quite such a blend of good grounded theology, but also some strongly held dogmatic stuff which seems to have no obvious grounding in that same scripture.

The last review left me not knowing what to make of Driscoll and all his works. I have a clearer idea now, and I fear I can take it or leave it, probably the latter. How ironic, then, that whilst in Japan I should meet someone who invited me to spend a week or two visiting Microsoft in Seattle this summer.

Duplicity

Since I'm leaving Sydney tomorrow, I thought I ought to go and check out the phenomenon which is the "Sydney Anglicans" before I do. For those not familiar with this particular tribe, they are known for a strong Conservative Evangelical zeal, which places them close to one end of the spectrum which is the Anglican Communion. Their Archbishop is quite outspoken about women in ministry, homosexuality, and a few other things beside.


The parish I found seemed to fit the bill well, with a substantial expository sermon as centrepiece. Trying to get away after the service without staying for coffee (because I did have to get somewhere else), I found myself talking to a genial chap at the door, who asked lots of questions about where I was from, whether I was married, whether I was saved, what I was reading at the moment, and a whole lot else beside. He had taken no part in the service, but getting home and checking out the web site, I discover that he was the minister... (I guess Sydney Anglicans are not big on clerical garb).

I answered his questions nicely, like a good evangelical. (I've only once before been asked at a church door whether I was "saved". That was in Australia, too. 12 years ago, at a most astonishing Brethren assembly. But I digress). I know all those answers to the evangelical questions. I could do the discourse in the style and vocabulary of an Anglican, if pressed, or a Baptist, or the Plymouth Brethren. But that's life: within limits, we tend to express ourselves in terms that will be understood by our hearers, and, if you're like me, to simplify the discourse as much as possible and so not challenge or unnecessarily evade the simple answer.

So I told him the kind of things he wanted to hear. All were substantially true, but it has to be said that I would tend to challenge the premiss of many of his questions. Is it duplicitous not to bother?

Relationality

Many people have discussed the way that we are created to live in relationships. We worry (or, occasionally, joke) about people who have no friends. It strikes me, though, that we are almost defined by our relationships.

What is the real "you"? The person you are in your quiet moments, or the person you are when relating to people (if we include things like consumer choices in the latter)? In a sense, it's related to the tension of faith and works. If there are things I might think, but would never express for fear of offending my friends, and would never act upon, for fear of being found out, then how strongly do I really think them? Hmm. There's deep water there. Hold that thought.

I've always had -- and I guess most people do -- a number of more-or-less distinct circles of friends. There's family, then there's colleagues, then there's church friends, then there's other friends, friends from other churches, guys I bump into at the gym, and, now, internet friends too. Facebook has a little application which draws a picture showing which of your friends are friends with others of your friends. My picture has lots of little, more-or-less isolated groups.

There's a wierd dissonance when people from those isolated groups do meet up. It's not generally bad, in fact, but it makes you slightly fearful: am I consistent with these different groups, or do I have different personas? If so, which is the real "me"?

Current wisdom encourages people to be true to themselves; to live the dream; to avoid suppressing their inner selves. I'm sure that's founded on good psychology, but it strikes me that this course of action frequently leads to dislocation, pain, and so on. If I said what I truly thought, and in the process alienated my family (for example; I don't know of anything likely to do that :-) ), would I really be happier than if I bit my tongue? I guess it depends. But so often, friends and family are the ones who keep us honest, who act as correctives upon our whackier points of view or purchasing decisions. That's good, it seems to me; we are made to live in relationships.

One of the engaging features of TV's LOST drama is the way that the cast do not have super knowledge of everything which has happened to everyone else. Rather like real life, each person has their own perspective on events, shaped by what they have witnessed and what conversations they have had, and what secrets they keep from each other. It's an interesting picture, and part of life's complexity I sometimes overlook.

Is there a point to this rambling?

I wonder. Profoundly, we need one another. I suspect that relationships are sometimes more important than truth: truth about ourselves, or truth in what we believe. We disrupt them at our peril.

Blogging the emerging

I was pointed to a new blog today (how many can there be?!). C. Michael Patton has been giving an analysis of things evangelical, emerging, and emergent. There's much to think about there - an an awful lot of comments (no, I'm not yet liberated enough to describe them as a ___-load of comments, not in writing, anyway).

The last part (linked above) struck me as the most interesting: it identifies five aspects of emerging:

1. Emerging Ecclesiologically
2. Emerging Sociologically
3. Emerging Theologically
4. Emerging Epistemologically
5. Emerging Politically

Clearly, they rather overlap (some of his theological examples sound epistemological to me), but this is a good start. Moreover, it gives us a five-dimensional space in which to place ourselves. It is, then, little wonder that the earlier blog posts struggle with a 1- or 2-dimensional representation.

Where do I place myself? Well, do you have a five-dimensional piece of paper? What's the five-dimensional version of a quadrant? Put me in the upper-right one of those, but not too far into it.

I laughed aloud

Something about this cartoon made me laugh heartily; I had to share it.

Jon Birch has always had a great sense of humour. He's proof that the world is a small place: I found his blog from ... someone else's ... but then realised I knew him at school, er, 25 years ago.

What's in a title? : Call me "pastor"?

I'm reading a book at the moment: the title and author don't matter. Let's call him "Mark". Mark complains that when he was first leading his new church fellowship, he was disarmed by the fact that no one addressed him as "Pastor Mark". That bothers me very much.

I can't begin to imagine why some men (generally men?!) would wish to stand on such titles. Perhaps it's just my upbringing, but it seems odd to me. Many of us hold that we have been created as "equals", and that we are all brothers in faith. The purpose of the label "Pastor" seems to be to separate; to distinguish; to place in a place of honour.

That seems very much at odds with the "one body many parts" picture, unless we also give special titles of honour to those who make the coffee, or sweep crap off the steps (yes; historically, the church of England does for the latter; he's called the Verger). It seems to imply that some kinds of service matter a whole lot more than others. In fact, it seems to put us back in to the situation many Reformed people would hate, of giving a special status to the Vicar, or Priest - and if we are not careful, denying the "priesthood of all believers".

It puts me in mind of Jesus' words (Matthew 23, TNIV):

5“Everything they do is done for people to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long; 6they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; 7they love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to have people call them ‘Rabbi.’ “But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have only one Master and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called ‘teacher,’ for you have one Teacher, the Messiah.

It's easy to diss the Catholics because they tend to call their priest "Father", and Jesus seems to suggest this is a bad idea. But doesn't the same apply to all titles of honour?

What is so bad about such titles? Well, besides seeming to imply that the body has some parts more important than others (which may, after all, be true), they seem to divide people into categories of those "allowed" to do theology, and those expected to take whatever they are given.

In that regard, I'm so grateful for my upbringing, wherein the truth about God "belonged" to everyone. Sure, there were elders, under whose authority members of the church placed themselves, but they exercised a lightness of touch which allowed for many voices, many perspectives. Sure, there are some who have a particular gift of teaching - but we don't expect gifts of prayer, or serving, or giving, or encouraging to be exercised exclusively by those who excel in those gifts, so why not also teaching and interpreting and prophesying? I don't want spiritual teaching to be dominated by one who does not have spiritual insight: but I'll value everyone's story of how God has spoken to them.

I'm not sorry to say that I don't recognise titles of honour or distinction among God's people. When I produce the church notice sheet/bulletin, no one gets a title; no one at all. Each of us has a name, and that suffices.

Yay! I have a blogroll

At last. Something pointed me to draft.blogger.com, where they keep the experimental stuff. And one of the new gadgets is something to suck your feed list out of Google reader, and present it as a side-bar here. So I have. The list is too long, really: it implies I'm incredibly well-read, whereas actually I confess that I dip in as and when I can. I have A-list blogs and B-list blogs: I probably need a better characterization than that. And I should edit the list for public consumption. Oh well. At least there's a little link-love there now.

Review: Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches

Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches
Five Perspectives
Robert E. Webber

You know you've been reading a book too long when your Facebook virtual bookshelf sends you an email to ask whether you are really still reading the book. I kid you not.

This is a good book, and it does pretty much what the title says. Each of five thinkers - or, more accurately, pastors - writes an essay on what they and their respective churches believe, and then each of the others writes a critique/commentary/feedback.

The perspectives come from quite a broad range: from Driscoll (who seems to have taken on the role lately of the emerging church's favourite bogeyman) who stridently holds to a traditional and conventional reformed theology, through to Ward, whom ... I find it much harder to sum up (but whose communitarian approach to theology is summed up by the fact that her chapter includes many excerpts from her group's blog). I liked them all.

Of course, for a group of people who tend to stress the need to do theology and practice hand-in-hand, to concentrate only on belief is perhaps artificial: and several of the contributors comment upon this. It leads Driscoll to give us a kind of mini-systematic-theology, with a couple of hundred proof texts. Some of the others concentrate on their distinctives, leading their peers to ask whether this is a real summary of belief. But if there had been too rigid a template, the result would have been turgid, whereas the free-form for each chapter allows its author's individual character to come through.

The authors are all American, so some of their perspective fails to connect for me: but that's reasonable enough. An internationally-drawn volume would be quite a different proposition. You could always suggest other people to throw into the mix, but if you want to get the beginning of a perspective of where these kind of writers are coming from -and what they think of one another - this is a good place to start.

There is something slightly cute and cuddly about the contributors: keen to emphasise the spirit of loving correction/discussion they go to some lengths to tell us how much they respect each other, have bathed one another's children, and so on. I could have done with a little less of this, but in a sense it is a nice touch: if one is to emphasise that emerging theology is inherently relational, how better to do so than by underlining the strength of the relationships among the authors.

Europe and America

In so many things, the more we know, the more realise we don't know. I have sooo much more to read.

I've been trying to understand the emerging patterns of church for about eighteen months, I guess, but I've been blogging for less than that - and somewhat sporadically. I'm aware that much of what I have read comes from North America. I guess there are a few reasons for that:

1. in this, as in so much else, a high proportion of the literature (in which I would include the blogsphere, and I suppose other media too - podcasts, Noomas, and so on) comes from the US. So, indeed, does a great deal of Evangelical thought.
2. in doing a literature search, one often tends to find a seam of related material; getting one's hooks into a different set of mutually self-referential writings depends a bit on luck and dogged determination.
3. it could also be that that is where the "action" is - though I have all sorts of reasons for doubting that.

The trouble is, so much of what I read from America doesn't feel like it's addressing my situation, sitting, as I do, most of the time, in Oxford. So much of what I read is by way of a protest - against the mega-church mentality, against church-as-big-business, against simplistic theology and hermeneutics, against an evangelical church aligned with a particular political party, and so on - and those are just not issues which really affect me. In my country, the Christian centre of gravity has long been somewhat to the left of the ruling parties, on most issues, churches are widely seen as struggling at the margins (though still populated by hypocrites, and having leaders whose word carries too much weight in national debates), and so on. There is a vast spectrum of belief and practice - from the most outspoken radical reformed folks through to the most socially active and liberally inclusive. Not only do you find different fellowships within the same denomination holding such widely different perspectives, you can find individuals within single local churches who hold such seemingly irreconcilable positions, too.

As a result, when I try to explain to Christian friends about the emerging literature I've been reading, I am often met with blank looks which seem to say "what's new there?". Justice for the poor? Yea: I think I had my first fair-trade tea about 30 years ago. Environmental concern? I feel sure that Spring Harvest had as its theme "Whose Earth? God's Earth" some 15 years ago. Self-organising local fellowships with plurality in leadership, open relations with like-minded folks? Yea; the one I belong to is about 50 years old; the one I grew up in, more like 100. And so on.

I don't for a moment want to suggest that everything is rosy: this is England where the impact we (as the whole family of people called Christians) are having for the Kingdom is diminishing by the day. And when I read stuff by Peter Rollins, I realise quite how "out there" things can yet become. I'd say that what I have been reading is certainly affecting my thinking, and so my practice, and gradually giving me courage to try new things with my church fellowship, too.

Every time I think I've got to "the edge" of the reading, I find something else to look at. Just last week, my friend Anna pointed my at Richard Rohr: she who had been to an emerging Jesuit Ash Wednesday service... I shall go on looking at literature which speaks to other people's situations: it is always instructive. Will I find some which speaks to mine? Who knows.

May we never stop learning.

I met an emerging celebrity :-)

Yesterday evening, I had a couple of beers (Guinness, to be precise: it had travelled surprisingly well) with Nicholas Fiedler of the Nick and Josh Podcast (dot com). Nicholas and his wife are making a grand world tour, stopping in Australia for the next little while, where I happen to be on sabbatical . An Englishman talking to an American in an Irish Bar in the middle of a major Australian city qualifies as some kind of cross-cultural experience, I guess (though it's hard to beat one I had about eighteen months ago, when a Frenchman and I - an Englishman - found ourselves ordering Chinese food in German, from a Dutch waiter - in Holland. Perhaps the remarkable thing is that we got what we were expecting!).

Nicholas and I talked over many things, from the whole nature of the emerging conversation, the differences therein between America and Europe (about which I must blog separately, I think), the shortcomings of American beer, the rules of cricket, and much else besides. It was a good chat, and reminds me indirectly that I must get the blogroll sorted out on this site, so that I can encourage readers to visit the podcast, and half a dozen other blogs I have taken to reading. It also reminds me that I should blog more often. Watch this space, as they say.

Review: The Radical Reformission

The Radical Reformission
Reaching out without selling out
Mark Driscoll

I really, really, don't know what to make of Mark Driscoll. Much of what he says resonates with me: he passionately believes in reconnecting the Christian community with the culture around us. And he passionately believes a mainstream kind of Christian faith, too. Which part of the mainstream? Well, that's where the problems start...

My introduction to this emerging conversation was with the writing of the likes of MacLaren and Bell; and through Driscoll's blog where he described being thrilled to attend a UFC event (which I hugely enjoy, too) - not something you might expect from a mainstream pastor. He remarks (though I can't now find a link) on how this sport is rapidly gaining support among precisely the demographic which is missing from the church. So I nearly fell off my chair when I discovered that he is also about as Reformed as they come, a believer in plenary verbal inspiration and so on. Those things just don't seem to go together.

So he's a bit of an enigma for me, and I was keen to read some of his stuff. The Radical Reformission seems to be a good opening salvo. I settled down to read. It's not a slender book, but is an easy, quick read.

And it is just the same mixture. Great in parts. The tale of his trip to a gay country and western bar in chapter 1 is priceless. The story of the search for diapers in Florida, likewise. He is at his best when describing his own experiences, relating, often very gently, to the people of Seattle, with their needs and wants and fears and peculiarities. There is plainly a great ministry going on there.

Then there are other parts where he gets theological and/or philosophical, and, well, I get what he's saying, but the style is reminiscent of a B-grade college essay. Simultaneously it talks down to you and yet feels wide-eyed and brave in its choice of words. It doesn't quite work.

Stylistic criticism aside, some bits I simply don't get. I respect, though can't quite share, his reading of scripture, but one part really stood out. (p102) Maybe this is mainstream for someone, but it doesn't quite add up: he says there are two kinds of sin, "Universal Sins" - which the bible roundly condemns for everyone (1 Cor 6:9-10 is his text), and "Particular Sins" which are sinful for some people in some circumstances. Let's leave aside the dangerous legalism which might follow from this perspective. He writes "For example, I personally disdain cigarettes, but I cannot forbid everyone in my church from smoking, because the Bible does not." Is that, then, a discussion of a particular sin, or something else? He goes on to say that churches fall into error when they fail to distinguish, and make everything a universal sin (yes, ok), or when they name "everything a particular sin and bless activities the Bible forbids, such as drug use, fornication, homosexuality, and cohabitation before marriage". The latter lacks a list of proof-texts (unsurprisingly?!). To suggest that the bible unequivocally condemns cocaine but not tobacco seems ... contorted at best.

Though my background is solidly evangelical, Reformed people have always scared me slightly. I can admire their clarity, but sometimes their great certainty about everything seems quite unwarranted. I find much to agree with in The Radical Reformission about the church and culture, and much that just seems plain odd. I'll certainly read more of what Driscoll has to say.